Three year old earns Mensa membership

A Barrister in England founded a high IQ society back in the 1940s. He called it Mensa.

Famous Mensa members include Isaac Asimov and actress Geena Davis. And now the group also includes a 3 year old from East Tennessee.

"That's nine seconds after she was born," Eric Janik said as he pointed to a framed pjoto pn the wall. "She looked up and stopped crying. That was it. I mean, I've never seen a newborn do that before."

They knew right away their daughter Selena was special.

"The whole way home she was crunching her eyebrows together and just looking out the window watching everything that went by like she was already trying to figure out the world you know," Cristy Janik said.

Cristy and Eric Janik say she showed some early counting and reading skills.

"She would point to a letter and she would tell me what the weather said and then she would go to the next one and tell me what that letter said and the next one. Then she could put them all together and read the whole word," Cristy said.

That's when they decided to get her IQ tested and discovered her school system offered the evaluation.

"They had some puzzles they put upside down and sideways where she had to try to maneuver them and put them together and she did really well with that. They had some blocks, the teacher would stack some blocks together and take them apart and tell her to re-do it and she did really well with that," Cristy said.

That intelligence test opened a door for the three year old Anderson County girl to join an elite group.

Eric said, "It about put me on the ground when I got the phone call. She got accepted into Mensa. I didn't understand what that meant at the time."

A card shows that Selena is a member of Mensa, an organization for super smart people who have scored in the top 2% on an intelligence test. Selena scored in the top 1%.

"I believe it was 135 on a composite scale," Cristy said.

She may be super smart but she is also super shy. When a camera crew isn't around she likes to read and build stuff and ask a lot of questions.

"Everything comes naturally to her. She picks up a book she'll know it. She picks up my wife's nursing book and asks her about the vascular system and stuff," Eric said.

Her parents don't take credit for her intelligence. "My father was an engineer. That's about the only smart person I know on my side of the family. I think it skips a generation," Eric said with a laugh.

So what's in the future for this intelligent toddler?

"She told me the other day she said Mommy what are the people who like molecules? And I said you mean a scientist. She said yes I want to be a scientist when I grow up," Cristy said.

Eric said, "I just want her to be happy whatever she chooses."

And she'll also have to continue to shine on IQ tests.

"She has to keep on retesting to keep her Mensa status but I don't think that will be a problem," Eric said.

Mensa offers a free half hour test you can take online to gauge how smart you are.